Mélo

When you do a theater adaptation, try not to forget the adaptation part.

It is a really rather good film, engrossing melodrama with a nice visual flair, but in its melodrama it leaves me wanting more, either I want it to possess the elegance of something like Letter from an Unknown Woman, or if it is going to be as talky as it is I'd prefer something more akin to the understated, insightful Rohmerian touch (which for me makes every line gripping). It wets the appetite, but needs something more to fully satisfy.

First act is amazing, third act is good, second act is almost unbearable melodramatic slop.

The camera and the performances, especially by Sabine Azéma, draw the viewer in, but each successive act seems a little less interesting than the one that came before, and the ultimate conclusion is a little underwhelming.

You might say anything about this, but I stick with Filipe Furtado's precise take: Resnais paints with emotion. It's the invisible things made somewhat visible by the filmmaker that make this film so unique. From the long shots to the subtle camera movements -- that one in the final conversation between the men, oh boy --, to the theater vibe to conjure an elliptical amtosphere to the character's paths -- it is, in the end of the day, a meditation on time, not just tragic, painful, killing love.

Melô estreava há 35 anos no Festival de Veneza. Quando o vi em 2010 o amei, nessa revisão caiu enormente no meu conceito, pois não tem misè-en-scene extraordinária do diretor que tire o gosto defasado do texto de Bernstein. Tem tem que nasce clássico, tem texto datado que merece ficar na gaveta pra sempre. Impensável reavivar um texto desses pós revolução sexual, só posso imaginar que faça parte do backlash anti-feminista que bateu forte no cinema oitentista. Box Versátil O Cinema

"As he grew older, Alain Resnais revealed the wistful sentimentalist behind the formalist pathfinder of Hiroshima Mon Amour and Muriel." - Fernando F. Croce